1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the packaging of semiconductor circuit components and, in particular, to a miniature packaging of discrete circuit components. More particularly, the present invention relates to the packaging of semiconductor circuit component at the semiconductor wafer level.
2. Description of the Related Art
Under the continuous trend of miniaturization of portable consumer electronics devices such as cell phones and personal digital assistant (PDA), discrete circuit components such as diodes and transistors are also becoming ever smaller. Diodes to the JEDEC (Joint Electronic Devices Engineering Council) 0402 specification are now common. Even smaller 0201 devices at 0.6 mm (L)×0.3 mm (W) are also emerging.
Surface mount packages of discrete circuit components for devices such as diodes and LED can now be found commonly in the form of, for example, (1) cylindrical glass/plastic packages, (2) lead-frame-based leaded packages, (3) flat-pack leadless rectangular packages, and (4) flip-chip packages.
Among the common packages, the fourth form, flip-chip, is advantageously featured as light, thin and small, however, it is expensive to fabricate. Flip-chip discrete components are currently a step away from mass commercialization also due to their difficulties in handling as well as poor reliability and performance characteristics. The former three forms of conventional discrete components described above, by comparison, are the dominant products. However, as the trend is for higher electrical performances, smaller and lighter packaging, these conventional packaging technologies are facing the limitation in their circuit dice/package body volumetric utilization at about 7 percent. This implies an inefficient utilization of the device size as the circuit dice takes up only 7 percent of the volume of that of the packaged product. Other disadvantages include limitations in the compliance to environmental protection regulations, the complication of packaging procedure, as well as the material used for the construction of the packaging.
Thus, although there is the matured pick-and-place technique and equipment available for the mass production application of these miniature discrete circuit components, cost of these devices constitutes the main obstacle for their wide-spread use. The main reason for their high costs stems from the conventional idea of the utilization of an initial substrate that serve as the base for the construction of the packaging of these devices. The use of such a substrate leads to the requirement of the use of expensive wire-bonding (in terms of both the costly gold-wire and the bottleneck of wire-bonding) or the use of the volumetrically inefficient lead-frame packaging.